The Russian Orthodox thinker Sergius Bulgakov is interesting to me for a couple reasons. First he articulates a vision of Sophia that challenges the quaternity of Jung which I am currently dissertating about. Second, Bulgakov was very active in promoting dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and Anglican churches, and so it is fitting for me to introduce Bulgakov by looking at George Herbert’s poem, Prayer I, which I reproduce here:
PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth ;
Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner’s towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;
Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.
So many of Herbert’s themes are here in such a compact, concise form. One of the first things I notice with this poem is that prayer has its dark and light sides. We start by characterizing it quite positively as God’s breath but then it immediately becomes sinner’s tower. This tendency for a good thing to be ruined by a bad man is a theme of Herbert’s, the way a priest abuses the priesthood in Affliction I or the way the poet perverts his own gift in Jordan II, but it is even more stunning here because what the sinner is perverting is God himself as Breath (I am reminded here of Barth’s trinity in which the Father speaks, the Son is spoken, and the Spirit is the response within us). Such a sin must be punished in Herbert’s world. Such a sin demands suffering and agonizing, and we know that Herbert does not lack the knack to express this. Yet that is what is so conspicuously missing in Prayer I, for the dark turns to light again with no explanation or expiation: “softness, and peace. . . . . ” but how? What of Christ’s blood? What of the sinner’s stubborness? There is a strong sense in this poem that it is God who is writing, God who is praying, and even man’s best effort to pervert the work of that God, even his “Christ-side-piercing spear” comes out to no more than “a kind of tune which all things hear and fear.” A mere tune? What is this tune? What is it if not the idea of creation itself, the heavenly archetype which informs all made things and which demands to cleave to its author and God? But Bulgakov, in describing (divine) Sophia, wants to go beyond a simply conceptual relationship between God and the world and so Sophia becomes, in Bulgakov’s The Bride of the Lamb, a kenosis of the “Trinity in unity.” In another place he says that Sophia is the “nature” of the Holy Trinity (without it being a separate hypostasis; in fact the hypostasis of Sophia comes from the human personality) (I have to admit that I am not always completely sure where Bulgakov is conceptually, so if I seem to be off the mark, please don’t hesitate to correct!) What I’m getting from this is that the divine Sophia (to which the earthly Sophia corresponds and strives) is part of the dynamism of the Trinity itself (Bulgakov denies the position that God might not have created, even though he affirms God’s satisfaction apart from creation). This would explain Bulgakov’s position of universal salvation, or something very close to it: “Evil loses the very foundation of being after the separation of good and evil. Evil is not eternalized as a result of this separation but, on the contrary, is ontologically annulled in the parousia,” and “Heaven does not exist in its fullness as long as and insofar as hell exists.”
This sense of man’s destiny for God and of unstoppable divine love is perhaps consistent with Orthodox thought, and I would question my readers whether it is not also evident in the Anglican tradition. And although I don’t think one sees it always in Herbert, in Prayer I we definitely get very close to it. Are not the atomic images somewhat like archeytpes in the mind of God, in their lack of syntax in the midst of precise order? Is not the turn from man’s sin to God’s “softness,” in that there is no explanation given, redolent of God’s illogical love of sinners? Is not the final phrase, of “something understood,” redolent of Wisdom herself? And is there not a confidence here in human Wisdom (erring as it is), such that Sophia is not a divine hypostasis but finds her hypostasis in us, in humanity, in the pinnacle of Creation? And what is this hypo-stasis, or this sub-stance, except something thats stands under?
A.D., I think your point is made even more strongly if you read “sinner’s tower” as being, perhaps, not just an image of the sinner’s rebellious “tower of Babel,” but also, at the same time, an image of the offensive military “tower” that the armies of Herbert’s day employed when besieging a walled city or an armed fortress. God’s hatred of sin walls God’s city against us, but our prayer is a battering ram and a seige-tower (think of the storming of the rock fortress in Peter Jackson’s “LOTR: The Two Towers”). Because Christ has stormed heaven for us, prayer enables us to storm the battleworks of an alienated God and win re-entry into the city of Grace. This unstoppable power of love and inclusion overcomes all partition and all of the defensive structures that arise from our unworthiness and our blindness to this love. Thus it lines up with “Christ-side-piercing spear,” which is simultaneously an image of blind human agression and at the same time of the paradoxical result, the releasing of the water and blood that flowed out to save all the world. (As Ransome says in Perelandra, “Is Maleldil a beast, that He should not bring forth good out of evil?”)
About your last sentences, they remind me of the Wisdom of Proverbs, by whom God made the world. “And she finds her delight in the sons of men.” Because they are the site wherein ingenuity dwells, and because they care for, they care ABOUT, the ingenuity manifest in the entire creation, in the law, in every created thing.
Great points Janet, I knew I could get some goods from you by dangling a little Herbert out there! The tower image is deeper now, I love the way God is seen here overcoming doubling upon doubling in our hysterical quest to put something in between . . . .
AD wrote: ‘(Bulgakov denies the position that God might not have created, even though he affirms God’s satisfaction apart from creation).’
Is this something like the following: God is fully actual in Godself, requiring no creature for God’s own perfection. Yet, God will create creatures given an over-determined creative act. Basically, is B.’s position that God’s perfection is over-determined? God is fully actual in Godself, yet God also creates given that God is God, and there is no ‘new’ causal basis for God’s creative act. It is only explained as though given God’s own perfection, God (necessarily) creates?? God’s own perfection is enough for God to be perfect(ly actual), yet God also creates creatures b/c God’s action is overdetermined, i.e. it includes divine infinity and finite creatures.
Bulgakov, I think, comes at it from the standpoint of time. And just like we cannot ask what God was doing before he created time, we can neither ask what creation was doing before time was created. And there was creation before there was time (he sees time as created on the fourth day). Sophia, as the plan of creation, or the seed of creation in God, was always there, did not find a starting point in time, but exists with God, if not as God.
Folks, can you fill us in on what’s happening in New Orleans? There are some hysterical posts out there in the Blogosphere that I don’t understand. Or it is just business as usual?
Also, I just read the great Time magazine stories on Mother Theresa and especially on her crisis of faith and I am filled with conflicting responses…. Maybe a post topic for you guys, to start a discussion?
Janet, it’s a sad time to be an Episcopalian, but an exciting time to be Anglican. {wuuuhhh!?!?!} I mean, the Episcopal church is being asked to do some pretty extraordinary things - however you look at it, TEC’s progressive {some would say hasty} stance and actions re: gay bishops, etc.. have resulted in a worldwide call to action. The AC wants TEC to make concessions that many bishops don’t want to make, for any number of reasons, and not just deu to partisan politics. A lot of canon law is at stake. That’s the sad part.
But the exciting part is that we’re witnessing Anglican theology as it’s being tested, as it’s taking an even more concrete shape than it has in a while. This is what really has me hopeful, despite the nay sayers. I believe that if folks like us demand theological rigor and authenticy as these decisions are made will see a host of benefits.
Unfortunately, some of this will come at the cost of division in the church.
Hopefully I or Aron will have more to say in the next couple weeks, despite the fact that we try to stay away from most of the politics here at TLOU… guess that’s wishful thinking for an Anglo-Catholic/Catholic Blog! I’m hesitant to say more as I don’t give a lot of stock to these blogs you mention. Look back over the past year and they keep chanting a lot of the same partisan slogans. But you can read the actual news here - http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/
Cheers!
Dan
Thanks very much! Good overview and link.